Fish Tales (pinball)

Fish Tales
Manufacturer Williams
Release date October 1992
System Williams WPC (Fliptronics II)
Design Mark Ritchie
Programming Mark Penacho
Artwork Pat McMahon
Mechanics Jack Skalon
Music Chris Granner
Sound Chris Granner
Production run 13,640 units

Fish Tales is a 1992 pinball game released by Williams. It is one of the top 20 most produced pinball machines of all time, selling more than 13,000 units.[1]

Overview

The game's theme is fishing, with a general goal of catching as many fish and telling the biggest lies about their size possible. The machine's backglass is topped with a plastic fish that thrashes its tail when the player achieves certain goals, and the players launches balls with an autoplunger shaped like a fishing rod.

Fish Tales introduced flippers with lightning bolts on them that were believed to be 1/8 inch shorter than other Williams flippers of the time. While seemingly minor, an extra 1/4 inch gap creates a far greater ball control challenge for the player. As such, this enhancement was only added to a few pinball titles before being abandoned.

Rules summary

The machine's rules present the player with three main objectives:

Other objectives include:

Scoring

Scoring levels on Fish Tales are more geometric than on most games, meaning that the difference in scores between beginner and expert players is greater than it is on other machines. Replay levels on most machines tend to be in the mid 8-digit range, and most early awards in the game tend to award between 1 and 20 million. High scores found on publicly playable machines are usually 200-500 million.

However, the game's multiball gives the player potential for far greater scores. If the player achieves three jackpots, the captive ball is lit for a Super Jackpot worth 100 million points. Once scored, future multiballs start the sequence again with all scores multiplied by the number of times the player had completed sequence, up to six. Moreover, when the super jackpot is lit, it stays lit for the rest of the multiball. This means that, potentially, a player can light the captive ball for endless repeated shots of up to 600 million points. As a result, scores in the billions are not uncommon among expert players. At the Pinburgh 2001 tournament Glenn Wilson achieved a score of 12,724,506,740, and this was on a machine set to much harder "tournament settings" (most importantly meaning that no Extra Ball can be achieved).

Reception

As of June 13, 2013 - #32 is where Fish Tales sits on the Pinside Top 100 ratings - the more commonly accepted ranking site for pin collectors/players.

Digital versions

Fish Tales is available as a licensed machine of The Pinball Arcade for several platforms.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=861

External links

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